Health:

1. Drink plenty of water.
2. Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a beggar.
3. Eat more foods that grow on trees and plants and eat less food that is manufactured in plants..
4. Live with the 3 E's -- Energy, Enthusiasm and Empathy
5. Make time to pray.
6. Play more games
7. Read more books than you did in 2011 .
8. Sit in silence for at least 10 minutes each day
9. Sleep for 7 hours.
10. Take a 10-30 minute walk daily. And while you walk, smile.

Personality:

11. Don't compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about.
12. Don't have negative thoughts or things you cannot control. Instead, invest your energy in the positive present moment.
13. Don't over do. Know your limits.
14. Don't take yourself so seriously. No one else does.
15. Don't waste your precious energy on gossip.
16. Dream more while you are awake
17. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need..
18. Forget issues of the past. Don't remind your partner with his/her mistakes of the past. That will ruin your
present happiness.
19. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone. Don't hate others.
20. Make peace with your past so it won't spoil the present.
21. No one is in charge of your happiness except you.
22. Realize that life is a school and you are here to learn. Problems are simply part of the curriculum that
appear and fade away like algebra class but the lessons you learn will last a lifetime.
23. Smile and laugh more.
24. You don't have to win every argument. Agree to disagree...

Society:

25. Call your family often.
26. Each day give something good to others.
27. Forgive everyone for everything..
28. Spend time w/ people over the age of 70 & under the age of 6.
29. Try to make at least three people smile each day.
30. What other people think of you is none of your business.
31. Your job won't take care of you when you are sick. Your friends will. Stay in touch.

Life:

32. Do the right thing!
33. Get rid of anything that isn't useful, beautiful or joyful.
34. GOD heals everything.
35. However good or bad a situation is, it will change..
36. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.
37. The best is yet to come..
38. When you awake alive in the morning, thank GOD for it.
39. Your Inner most is always happy. So, be happy.

Live by these thoughts and affirm your personal and professional success.

This is the second of a two-part series co-authored with Jerry Montgomery, Sales Consultant and Jim Martin, Ultimate Sales Guru in B2B sales. You can find Part I here.

The days of the “good old boy” fast talking, back slapping approach has long past but it’s surprising how much of it you still observe. Great sellers have two (2) key attributes 1) they develop enduring relationships, 2) they are really great at uncovering customer problems and use that knowledge to properly position their products.

The best sellers in today’s world are in many cases the quietest people in the room but have the greatest awareness of what is going on around them. One of the best metaphors on selling is “selling is not telling” meaning great sellers do not need to overwhelm the conversation.

Sellers have to sell themselves and their company before they become serious contenders for the target customer’s business. How do they do that?

They have expert questioning skills that allows them to garner more information about the customer

The most overlooked skill In selling-they are great listeners, they get the customer talking and this allows them to know more about the customer than their competitor’s

They have a very positive company story explaining how their company is a good match for the target customer

If a seller is skillful in these three (3) areas the other parts of selling become easier, especially closing; which is the part of selling most fear and fail at.

In order to acquire the needed information the use of good interviewing skills and listening skills is paramount and you can determine this by using this formula:

(Sx35+Cx65=S)or the salesperson talks 35% of the time and the customer talks 65% and that equals a sale

The only job of a seller is to gain a commitment from the customer and to accomplish this it is necessary for the seller to sell themselves and their companies’.

This is the first in a two part series co-authored with Jerry Montgomery, Sales Consultant and Jim Martin, Ultimate Sales Guru in B2B sales.

Selling is a critical business discipline that is the most overlooked and under managed portion of small to medium size businesses. Unfortunately, too many send their support staff and production people to seminars all around the country in order to keep them up to date with the latest information and techniques. They send marketing personnel to trade shows to look at new products and concepts. But what about sales?

Here are some fundamental questions relative to your sales and sales management:

How much do you budget for sales training each year?

How many years has it been since you provided any type of sales training?

If you have provided sales training what has been the follow-up plan to insure the training sticks?

How many sales books do you have you seller’s read each month?

How do you measure your seller’s effectiveness?

Selling is an art with a lot of science behind the development of sales training programs. Selling is a teachable discipline and can be learned much faster than other business disciplines if the training is managed and monitored to insure that what’s taught is actually used on a continuing basis. Teaching the basic skills is the easiest part, insuring that follow-up managing and monitoring takes place is a more difficult task and is where most companies fail.

Come back next week to learn what makes a seller an Ultimate Seller.

Need some help in putting an effective training and sales management schedule together for 2013? Contact the Ultimate Seller @ ask@ultimateselling.com.

Recently, I had the opportunity and pleasure to view a slide show on this topic and believe it’s an excellent representation of the disciplines required to be a "Sales Fanatic" or what I call an "Ultimate Seller". I trust you will enjoy and learn from this slide deck authored by Abhishekshah.

Become a “Sales Fanatic” to close out 2012 strong and make 2013 the best year ever.

The following blog is a guest post provided by Paul Riecks of INSIGHT. Paul brings more than 40 years of business management experience as a peer group pioneer and principal of The Inner Circle Mid-Atlantic for 25 years and prior to that a Senior Vice President of Equitable Bank, responsible for development and marketing of financial products and three start-up bank subsidiaries. Riecks writes a monthly column in Baltimore, Washington and Philadelphia SmartCEO magazines and has been published by The Baltimore Business Journal and penned his book: Running Your Own Company: An Entrepreneur’s Field Manual. You can read his weekly blogs for INSIGHT here.

I wish I had a dollar for every time I have been in a conversation with someone or a group on the subject of getting more referrals and someone says, “Just pick of the phone!” What that person means is that we all know people who know who we are and what we do. They need reminders about who we seek to grow our businesses. They could even be considered our “unpaid sales force.” But as supportive as they are, they are not your employees and they are not immersed in your business each day. They need periodic refreshers about you and the good work that you do. You know who your biggest fans are. Make a list: friends, former customers, people you have helped. Develop a regular program of “touches” such as phone calls, e-mails, notes, sending something you know they would be interested in. Have breakfast, coffee or lunch. Tell stories about how things your company does help your customers. Telling stories is one of the most powerful ways to educate people about your business. In many of those conversations mentioned above that I wish I had a dollar for, someone will pipe up and say, “You know, I called someone I had not spoken to in a while and after we talked for a few minutes he said, I know someone you should talk to.” Has this happened to you? It won’t if you don’t pick up the phone!

Chances are, you'’e spending far too much time in low to medium risk activities with like rewards when it’s you're high risk/high reward activities that will impact sales outcomes the most.

Would you like to gain more discretionary (Personal) time while increasing sales?

Then its time for you to do some daily self-analysis on just how you're spending or investing your time. And the best part, your the only one who can win or lose in the process. To begin, lets define what low, medium or high risk work activities are. For example:

For the next 5 days, compete a daily sheet to measure how your spending your time. It’s your personal analysis so be honest with your assessment. Then start changing how you spend your time. And remember, time is the one thing you can’t get back, so spend or invest it wisely!

Successful selling is definitely about TWO OUTCOMES, yours and theirs.

But in order to get yours, you have to give them theirs. It begins when you learn how to sell from your prospects perspective, not yours; and focus on the many ways they’re going to win from utilizing your product and service.

Today, there is much dialogue between the consultative selling process and the insight selling process. As an Ultimate Seller, you need to master both. As you think about your prospects, do you begin with an insight on their business and how you can provide significant gains to their business? In how many ways and what areas? What else have you helped them uncover? How much of their excitement is about soft dollars?

As you can see, they’re many avenues to explore. So start speaking about the outcomes they will receive from your products and services with heavy emphasis on how they apply to your prospect? You know, WIIFT (what’s in it for them) vs. WIIFM (what’s in it for me). Trust me, it’s all about them, not you!

Here are some points to consider when engaging with prospects:

Do you have a compelling story?

Do you apply it in your sales interactions with prospects?

Do you help them discover what they want?

Can you keep the focus on what they are eliminating, mitigating and their payoffs and gains?

Can you help them articulate their gains and why they need to act, Now!?

So, sell your prospects outcomes first by focusing on WIIFT and you will have more WIIFM.